Everything posted by BardicKnowledge

First and foremost, this arrangement is incredible. Holy smokes, I'm not sure I'm going to have words to give voice to how much I like the solo soprano part, and the Debussy-esque floating just before the three-minute mark at 2:56 or so. Tremendous work here that everyone needs to experience that reminds me of the vocal stylings of Eric Whitacre and Christopher Tin -- and I don't make comparisons to either of them very often.
I agree with the judges that the production brings it down some, however. One of the problems of being compared to the great vocal arrangers of our time is that their work demands great vocal performers, and it's apparent that we don't have that in the choir here (save for the excellent soloists). For me, the bass clef choir voices -- especially the few moments they have to carry us forward -- really stand out as artificial, which brings me out of the experience. I'm a little surprised none of the judges had anything to say about 2:48 (the worst production moment for me after the initial vocal hold that's been discussed elsewhere), but will assume it's because the aforementioned pause is SO GOOD right after that.
That being said, it's one of the great vocal arrangements on the site, and we have precious few that make full use of a choir (largely for logistical reasons). Absolutely incredible arranging skills here -- if you ever need voice parts recorded, I imagine that you'll have a number of volunteers (including me, fwiw) happy to step up and help your work shine as brightly as it might.

I feel like this post might better be served in the general forum rather than the scholarly / history forum, given how any answer I can think of trends toward snarky comedy (which I'm not against by any means, as others can attest).

Wanted to chime in and say that this is a great analysis. That it doesn't contain specific jargon I could care less about -- I'm motivated to track down the relevant stages and listen for myself after reading since I missed out on Super Monkey Ball. From this, I'm reminded a little of the final stage of Katamari Damacy in which the music is particularly less upbeat compared to the euphoric whimsy (visually and aurally) on display in the opening stages.

Me, Drumultima, and two scholars not on OCR (Dana Plank and Michael Harris) have begun playing through Final Fantasy VI while we talk about what's interesting in the music as we go along. The first quarter or so of the game is done and posted to YouTube here -- join us Thursday, 2/9, at 9:00 PM EST for the next session (likely to include the opera scene).
Any particular things you're interested in hearing us muse over between leaving Narshe after Terra flies off and departing for Thamasa (as far as we're likely to get next time)? Let us know!
EDIT: Our second session is up on both YouTube and Twitch -- we got as far as the escape from the Magitek Research Facility. Doug couldn't make it (thanks to the Northeast weather) so we called upon Julianne Grasso to sub for him.

We did some of that, and I'm sure Doug will want to chime in when we hear it again in the World of Ruin. Because they are so similar in both story and music (that is, minor arrangements of the major themes given to their male counterparts), we will probably also return to Rachel when we encounter Daryl's theme probably two sessions from now.

For some reason, all of the text that I see (including this message as I type it) appear in italics as if an italicized font was suddenly the standard. Firefox no longer differentiates between this and this, despite the fact that only the second has italics for the rest of you. Did I screw up some setting somewhere? If someone could help me out, that'd be awesome -- this is really starting to get annoying.

I rarely post reviews -- something that I should definitely do more often -- but holy smokes, this is the best channeling of Debussy I have heard in a very long time, without limiting that qualification to fan-made material. I also love that it tackles what is a very short source, demonstrating that there is a mountain of potential for almost anything given enough talent....
...and "enough" doesn't even begin to describe what's going on here. The ending is particularly well-executed, giving us the source melody clearly in a way that doesn't feel contrived in the slightest. I'm going to be gushing about this for some time to come.

For more reference, Roger Moseley is the person responsible for coining the term "ludomusicology" in the first place, though I don't know when that was (long before the North American conference came to be though).

Feel free to jump on top of it! I got far too busy with finishing my dissertation to take any real action on it, sadly. Might be a good idea to send Tim, Michiel, etc. a draft version before you publish, but you probably wouldn't have to.
P.S. I know one ludomusicologist based in Australia -- at the University of Sydney. There's also a film scholar there, both of whom are worth your time to meet...add me on Facebook and I'll put you in touch!

Everyone, Karen Cook -- one of my ludomusicology colleagues -- is putting together a database of games that include chant, or music close enough to be thought of as chant (e.g. Halo's iconic opening moments). I thought the community might be able to help her out, so I'm going to throw the list down here and see what we all come up with.
After the thread starts to die down, I'll send along all of everyone's additions to Karen, who will put it to good use.
I'll start off by including the first additions: Final Fantasy X and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon should have been on here.
Games Including Chant or “Chant-Like” Music: A Partial Inventory:
(Suggestions and Additions heartily welcomed!)
1. Halo (series)
2. Sid Meier’s Civilization IV
3. Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
4. Sid Meier’s Civilization V
5. Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies
6. Assassin’s Creed
7. Skyrim
8. Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
9. The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
10. The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning
11. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
12. The Hobbit
13. Pandora’s Tower
14. Dante’s Inferno
15. The Da Vinci Code
16. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
17. Medieval II: Total War
18. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
19. Reign of Kings
20. Bloodborne
21. Phantasmagoria
22. Final Fantasy VII
23. Final Fantasy IX
24. Final Fantasy XIII
25. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
26. Resident Evil
27. Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
28. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
29. Heroes of Might and Magic III
30. Heroes of Might and Magic V
31. Warcraft II
32. 7th Guest
33. The Talos Principle
34. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
35. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
36. Age of Empires III
37. The Binding of Isaac
38. MediEvil
39. MediEvil II
40. Van Helsing
41. God of War 3
42. Slain
43. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
44. Gabriel Knight 3
45. Hexen
46. Zombies Ate My Neighbors
47. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
48. Gauntlet Legends
49. Sam and Max, Season 2

I agree with this. Aside from a couple Payload map spots (Watchpoint: Gibraltar comes to mind), the maps tend to work against her -- this is particularly true of Nepal, in which basically none of the three maps provide her both a clean shot to and a safe distance from the point. Her single best use case in ranked IMO is the Ilios map with the arena at the bottom of a flight of stairs as a hard counterpick to Pharah. Otherwise, whatever you want to accomplish with her can probably be better done with a different character.
Keep in mind that for static defenses, Ana is at least as good as she is (turrets) or flat out better (putting Bastion to sleep forces him to stand in movement mode, allowing you enough time to kill him if he doesn't retreat immediately), and she also heals and has one of the game's best ults. This completely kills one of the big use-cases Widow had going for her on release -- and she didn't get any to make up for it. Tom's right that by and large, the people who do play her can shoot -- but they can shoot better with basically any other character right now.
Potential changes to help her positioning: (just for fun)
-Allow grappling hook to temporarily let her cling to a wall like a spider (say, for 2-3 shots worth of time)
-Allow grappling hook to let her descend and ascend in a straight vertical line, like the famous sequence from Mission: Impossible.

Blake Neely is knocking the entire CW-verse out of the park, and I agree that Supergirl represents his best work thus far. It's hard to sound as uplifting as Williams, and somehow he manages it without sounding like a weak impression.
The Flash Main Theme, while not as hummable, is great as well, with both the two-chord choral intro and the ostinato serving as powerful things for the audience to latch onto. Reminds me of much of Hans Zimmer's work where one small kernel can carry an entire scene (think of the four chords that form the final cue to Inception, for instance). See Frank Lehman's chapter in the new Routledge book "Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle" for more: https://books.google.com/books/about/Music_in_Epic_Film.html?id=JVH0DAAAQBAJ